RED HAND

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 239, 30 May 1932, Page 3

RED HAND

SEAMEN'S STRIKE CLASSIFIED AS OPEN MUTINY UNDER GERMAN • ACT. NO PREWOUS ANNOUNCEMENT. Some months ago large parts of the crews of 42 German ships lying in the port of Leningrad, or arriving there, struck work without pre.vious announcement and without being paid off. Such an offenee is classified as open mutiny under the German Merchant Shipping Act. The German Consul-General immediately applied to the chief of the Russian harbour police (G.P.U.) asking for the return of the mutineers -and the protection of the ships, the ship's officers, and the men .willing to work. Although promises to this effect were given, it was soon found that the Soviet authorities abstained from taking any effective steps. Every morning the German seamen were induced — by persuasion, threats or force — to leave the ships, after which they were dragged to the Communist clubs and mseting places ashore. The organisers, as a rule, were German Communist functionaries. The men were told that a general strike of seamen had been proelaimed in the port of Hamburg, and were asked to join. The truth was that, although a "wild" strike had been attempted by the Communists on a few vessels in the port of Hamburg, this attempt proved a complete failure from the start. It was not until the German Government lodged a sharp protest in Moscow that the Leningrad authorities took any active steps. The strike was disavowed by the local Communist organisation, and the first ships left the port of Leningrad on the same day, manned by their own crews. All the ships subsequently returned, and mutineers were sentenced to several months of imprisonment. The proceedings before the court revealed a great deal of Communist propaganda in favour of a strike, but they likewise showed that the strike initiated by Moscow proved a complete failure — a failure for which the cairn attitude of the seamen in -Hamburg (where the general strike was to start) was largely responsible. The strike had been decided upon by the Hamburg meeting of the International Federation of Harbour Workers, Seamen and Transport Workers on Inland Waterways, acting on instructions received from Moscow. The intsntion was that it should spread to Antwerp, Bremen, Danzig, Lisbon and other ports. In Hamburg i only four ships took part in the strike, and all these were Russian owned. The Moscow headquarters of the movement had decreed that the strike should not extend to the ports of the Soviet Republie, so as to prevent interference with the working of the Five Year Plan; and yet, the only port where it assumed the extent above described was ' Leningrad. This fact of course, coupled with the liiplomatic action of the German Government, was greatly resented by the strike organisation for reasons of party diseipline, and led to its discontinuation Couriers were dispatched to the German strike organisations, who were told that Moscow strongly disapproved of the way that the Leningrad mutineers had acted at their own responsibility, and that they need not look forward to any support from the Soviet authorities.